Chapter 6: Into the Woods

"Vit das axmen ve start you, ja?" said Jacob Martz, as he grunted and pushed himself back from the still-laden breakfast table. "Dis time uf year, dot's vhat most uf das verdammen colliers does. Dey use apprentice splitters, stackers undt haulers. Bonuses, ja. Undt zo," he rubbed his wide chin, "vell, apprendice you'll be to my foreman for a vhile. He jus' lost his Junge last week, Zufall, got his hand tore off somehow."

"How many men you got working here?" Matthew asked, buttoning up his stiff, new coat and trying to ignore the mental picture of a torn-off hand. It was his first Monday on the job, and he was still getting acquainted with a world that did not shift and roll, a world in which there was plenty of good food, fresh water and even some willing women. Before him on this slab table lay everything a man might want for breakfast, fresh and steaming, everything but tea.

He had convinced himself that he could survive in a world without his big brother, without a wife for some time and, evidently, without tea, and now he was going to find out if he was right. He looked forward to his work, and since he had worked hard since he was ten years old, he thought of long days and sore muscles as the human norm, the way life was.

"Vorkers, oh zwei hundredt, vielleicht, countin' jede selle, eferyvon. Most a hundred slafes now haf ve got, mostly miners, rowers on barges, some iron vorkers, most hostlers. Men like you, ja, indenchured, vell." He pushed up his old wig a bit and scratched his ear, "zwanzig-twenty, thirty or so though some'bout to finish their time, come first of the year. Don't mean they'll leafe. We got some convict labor, too, sefen-year men. Den d'ironmaster undt his crew, some of them's 'dentured too," he counted them off on his fingers, "plus the blacksmith, dot hard bunch at the forge. Stay avay from dem. Ya, think two hundred's a good guess, but my job's chust dot damn eisern furnace. Ve'll have two here right soon, and in a vile there'll be two more belching away out near Fred'rich Town makin' pig iron into golden pounds for dose pesky infestors."

"Where?" asked Matthew.

"Ach, out vest, dot vay, Fred'rich, near d'Potomac Rifer," Martz waved toward the trees. "Vas named for one of the damn royals or dot sodomite Lord Proprietor who villed Maryland to his unrecht son, may both uf 'em rot in hell." Martz smiled and clapped his hands together to set his gloves in place. "Come on. Show you 'round and put you t'vork. Ve paid for yer clothes, food, bett, and one goot swiving, ja. You rest Sonntag, Sunday, mit d'other lay-abouts. Hope you got to know some undt didn't play cards vith none uf 'em. Time you got to vork. Ja?"

Once out of the barracks' mess hall, Matt was glad he had his new hat to pull down over his ears. The wind whistled down from the north and the dank sky promised more snow. He stuffed his hands in his deep pockets and followed the foreman up a steep embankment to an almost empty and reasonably level field of some five or six acres. Even the stumps had been removed from this gently rolling landscape. For some reason it reminded Matthew of the ocean, a still and bleak ocean.

"Now here's the first pit," Martz said, kicking at a blackened circle some thirty feet in diameter and holding his cocked hat to his head.

"Tain't a pit a'tall." Matt looked at the staggered row of huge circles on the plateau, all edged with thick mounds of charcoal dust, some with what looked like a flag staff stuck squarely in their coal-black middle.

"Ja, I know, but dey calls 'em dot. I say 'hearth, ' dey auf 'pit.' Anyroad, here ve make the damn charcoal, not down in the ground like you might'a in the old country. Them odd-lookin' shacks vhere most of d'colliers liff. You can see big piles of charcoal yonder, at the coal house and unter dat canvas."

"Sure not like I seen at home, nothing like."

"You'll get used to it. MacCorm!" he yelled. "Ach, McCorm!"

A large, stubble-faced man wearing heavy britches, short boots and a leather coat waved and stopped. His head was bare and his heavy mane of dark hair tied back with a black ribbon. He leaned on his double bladed ax and waited for Martz and Matthew to catch up, his face set in a small smile.

"Dis here's Matt, fresh off d' boat, Anglisher. He's claimin' he done some charcoaling. Vhere you cutting heute, today?"

"South a'the creek," the big man said, looking Matt over and making some sort of assessment. MacCorm appeared to be about forty, but his craggy, weather-lined face made guessing difficult. He was square all over, jaw, shoulders and hips, a solid man of more than fourteen stone.

"Vell Mac, take him vith you; see if he knows vhich end of the damn ax is sharp. He's part uf your crew now. Explain how das bonus vorks, ja. He's bespoke, got four years to learn. Hope he don' take so long. Out-eat effen you he can." Martz pounded Matt's back and trotted down the hill toward the barracks as dozens of men emerged and went toward their various jobs. At the end of the high bank, the furnace in operation grumbled and belched clouds of dark smoke while stone masons worked on building its huge brother. The water driven air pump between them turned slowly as the sluice gate opened. Bare legged black men trundled handcarts across a wooden bridge toward the chimney.

"Come along, then. We'll hitch a ride on that pung. Got plenty'a mauls and spare axes." He grabbed Matt's hand and gripped it hard, looking him in the face as he did, eyes like cold agates.

Matt matched his grip and said, "Good t'meet you," through clenched teeth. He could feel the bones in his hand moving as they were compressed.

"You'll do," said MacCorm, who was one of the very few men Matthew had seen since coming to Maryland who did not wear some sort of hat. He evidently did not shave very often. "Another 'demptioner, eh? That's how I got here, ten, no, twelve year ago. From Scotland, did four years for a good man. Things was a lot calmer. We was working bog ore back then. I dinna know George was going down to Annapolis. Did you by chance meet the bonny, wicked, little Jean?

"Uh huh, she the reason he goes down there?"

"Might be enough. She's a good 'un, but he was replacin' my youngster. Look boy, most colliers is on wages, but the bonuses goes to everybody, fair shares, y'ken. We get, rough figuring, ten shillings for four cords, a pound for eight, a bit less really, hard to do in your head. This here sled holds about two cords. End of the month, we meet the quota, its five pence per extra cord for every ax man on the team, free or not. Most gives their apprentices two a'the five. It mounts up, y'see. We get docked for meals, a'course; you don't. But then, we can marry, sire young'uns and leave if we wants. Ain't a bad job, all in all. Feeds my family, and they's talking 'bout a better job soon, out West."

"Furnace eats a lot a'wood, eh?" Matt asked, watching it puff as the bellows operated. He could now see the glowing, open hatch into which straining crews dumped the big cartfuls of raw materials.

"We're goin' t'need about seven or eight thousand cords a year when that second iron furnace fires up, maybe more."

"Od's life!" said Matt, pulling his hat down as the wind rattled the bare-limbed trees. "A whole forest. Ain't that much wood left in all of Kent."

"Not a problem here, lad, not a bit. We got more'n four hundred acres of prime timber left here and rights to twice that much just to the north of the creek. We've already cut 'most a thousand acres."

"When d'you start making charcoal?" Matt stepped up onto the back of the heavy sled.

"In the spring, once the rains're past, late April usually; we work on 'til the trees shed their leaves. Then we go back to cutting cord wood. And we cut everything here, hard wood and soft, large and small 'cept for the biggest. It all goes into them piles as billets or lapwood. You'll see why we dinna need no pit, come the spring, you'll see."

A short, bald, stringy-muscled African slave wearing a long coat with a rope for a belt and antique spatterguards over his bare feet and legs led the mule team that drew the sled down a well-worn trail and into the woods. They crossed a partly frozen creek, climbed a stump-studded hill and slid to a stop in a clearing that held several jumbled piles of freshly-cut timber.

"Help Nikko load the sled. He'll show ya how, Matt. This here's one of my load. I dinna have no help end of last week. I'll start marking out today's work. The rest'a our team'll be along directly."

The slave, eyes narrowed in a hairless, blue-black face that featured dotted tattoo scars on both cheeks, led his brace of mules to the first huge pile containing four-foot lengths of neatly split hardwood. Matt began throwing pieces onto the sled, but Nikko stopped him by grabbing his arm.

"No, no." the slave said. "Lookee." He jumped into the sled, took the three balks Matt had tossed aboard and placed them neatly beside each other and between the runners. "Must do, count man, he boss," he said, showing his filed teeth.

"He knows," MacCorm yelled. He had been watching this lesson on the edge of the uncut timber. "We gotta measure cords, four by four by eight, tight packed, ye ken?"

Nikko stayed aboard the sled, hands at hips. "You throw," he said. Matthew got the idea and began heaving lengths of fresh-smelling cordwood to the slave as rapidly as he could. Often there was one piece arcing through the air while the lean black man was stacking another. The action became mechanical, and soon the new man, despite a few splinters, could toss accurately without looking or thinking. The disorderly pile dwindled, and the neat stack on the sled rose to the top of its four-foot sides.

Matt, who was puffing and sweating, and Nikko, who was not, finished the first sledful with armloads of cut limbs and smaller pieces plus a few sticks from the second pile, and the slave clucked at his mules and headed back down the slippery trail, trotting along effortlessly. By then the orange-red sun had climbed clear of the heavily wooded horizon, and Matthew noticed that several other sleds had arrived in the clearing, and four more two-man teams were starting the day by blazing trees to mark out areas they planned to attack. MacCorm returned with his huge ax over his shoulder and had brief conversations with some of the other men before coming back to where Matt stood, panting hard and pulling a big splinter from his thumb.

"That Nikko's some worker, ain't he?" MacCorm said. "Never stops. Here's some gloves. Grab that ax, and lets us start felling some over here. You right handed, are ye?"

Matt nodded, still not sure he had his breath back. He hefted the ax and followed MacCorm to a tall, thin pin oak, pulling on the leather gloves with their heavy seams. "You stand over there," the hard- faced man said, spitting on his callused hands, "and do what I do. If I cut high; ye cut high; if I go low, so do you. We'll start with an undercut since we want it to fall over that'a way. Remember that thing's razor sharp. Ready?

In the next hour or so, with several breaks to renew their axes' edges, MacCorm and Matthew felled more than a dozen trees, several two feet or more in diameter, at the rate of about one every five or ten minutes, and they cut twice that number of saplings. It took Matt a while, but he soon adapted to MacCorm's steady, unhurried rhythm, and between them they made the white chips fly. The ax men left the old giants standing but took all their children. Around him in the dense woods, Matt could hear the ring of the other crews' axes and the tearing sound of tall, bare-limbed trees crashing to the ground in the virgin forest. Only a few conifers mixed into this stand which made the going easier.

When MacCorm stopped to look at what they had accomplished, with most of the trees lying parallel to each other and only a few overlapping, he smiled. "We got saw crews that come out later and get the big ones. Haul 'em off to our mill to get sliced up for lumber. They're too valuable to charcoal. Shipyards're using a lot these days."

Matt pulled off his new gloves, carefully. Bloody blisters had grown and torn open on both of his hands. The pads at the base of his fingers were a row of sores; his hard-won calluses had disintergrated, and the heels of both bands oozed watery blood from pulpy tissue. MacCorm looked at them and made a tisking noise. "You was on ship for some time, wasn't you?" he said, shaking his head and rubbing his stubbled face.

Matt nodded and flexed his stiffened fingers. Blisters had also developed along several of them and on the web between his thumb and forefinger. He knew his hands would harden in time, but this was a disappointing and painful start. He had thought that the hardness earned on the "Lune's" pumps would be enough. He rubbed his palms on his coat, ignored the pain and tugged his gloves back on.

"Hands get soft out there, all that damn water with no real work. Your calluses'll be back. I could feel how hard your hand was underneath. When we stops for dinner, maybe you can get some salt on 'em and wrap 'em up. If not then, do it tonight. You're through ax cutting for today. I'll start limbing and whacking up four-foot lengths, and you split 'em up like the pieces you tossed back yonder. You'll find some wedges and mauls over by that fire. Most of this wood splits pretty good."

Matt had not noticed the fire before, but now saw several men standing near it leaning on axes and drinking from tin cups like the one he had used on the "Lune." He walked over, introduced himself and shook some bare and gloved hands, wincing as he did. "Hep yourself," one said. "Dunno what it is, but it's hot and sweet."

"Rabbit piss," another said and he laughed. "It's made out of berry leaves, Matt, mostly raspberry I think. Maybe you ain't heard that on this job, we don't drink no real tea and very little coffee."

"You don't? Why not?" Matt asked pouring himself some of the odd smelling liquid. It was dark brown and looked more or less like tea. The taste was acrid despite the sugar in it, but he drank it down, enjoying the warmth of the cup almost as much as the drink.

"Boss is a king-hatin', trouble-makin', bloody-minded Whig, that's why we gets no China tea," said a angular black man with a sheath knife at his belt. He saw Matt look at the knife and raised his eyebrows. "I'm a free man," he said quietly. "What are you?"

"Bondsman," said Matt. "Four years."

"White slave," said the unsmiling black man, turning away.

America was going to take some learning, Matt realized when he was able to think about anything but his sore hands.

A horse-drawn sled with metal-clad runners brought baskets of food to the ax men early in the afternoon and a couple of hours later, as darkness began to settle in the deep woods and tendrils of smoke hung in the upper branches, MacCorm called quitting time in a voice that probably was heard half way to Annapolis. He and Matt rode back to the furnace and foundry on the back of Nikko's half-loaded sled while the slave hopped astride his shaggy mule, his bare feet nearly touching the ground.